Cayden MacCachren: “The Gen. 2 RZR Pro R Factory Edition is the Most Capable Vehicle I’ve Ever Raced”
It’s been an exciting few months for Polaris Factory Racing’s Cayden MacCachren, to say the least. After capping off the 2023 SCORE World Desert Championship season with a Baja 1000 victory, completing a clean sweep of the season for the first-year team, the second-generation superstar came out of the 2024 season-opening San Felipe 250 with another win—a mark of redemption after he faced issues just miles from taking the win last year.
But MacCachren will be the first to tell you that “rent is due every day on a race team,” and he stood by it when we caught up with him after taking the win. In our exclusive interview, he talks about going from the back to the front in San Felipe, how the team has put the competition on notice with the second generation of the RZR Pro R Factory Edition, and what’s next for the team:
Last time we talked, you were celebrating a win in the Baja 1000, the sport’s biggest race. Now, you’re right back on top of the box in San Felipe. How does it feel to know you and the team haven’t missed a beat in the offseason?
Obviously it’s great. Winning that last year to end the year off and put everybody in the offseason, if you could ever call it that—we only had about a month with, right after the 1000, Thanksgiving and then Christmas and New Year’s and then the end of January. Then we went to (King of the) Hammers, and then we had about another four or five weeks to debut the new generation two cars at San Felipe.
I had no thought that we were going to fall behind the ball at all over the offseason, but it was good to come back and win San Felipe with a new generation 2 RZR Pro R Factory on a debut and know that the whole team was as excited as ever, and motivated to stay on top of the box. We’ve won quite a few races in a row now, and it’s getting scarier and scarier to (feel like) we can’t lose, that winning is expected. So to continue doing that is great for us and the whole team.
Let’s walk through your race day itself in San Felipe. You drew the 18th starting spot, so you had quite a few cars to pass early on, but San Felipe has a reputation for being a very rough course. With that in mind, is it more of an advantage to have your competitors taking the course on first, or does it make things tougher as more and more racers hit the course?
About, I think, a week before the race, the draw results come out and are posted online. I was actually out pre-running and, my co-rider/girlfriend Haley was in the back of the pre-runner. We have a Starlink on the car, and I saw the time was 5 p.m. and SCORE posted that was when the draw results was going to come out. So, I said “where do you think I drew?” And she pulled it up on her phone while we were out pre-running, and we saw that we drew back of the line. There were a few requested rear starts behind me, but mostly everybody that I thought was going to be true competition was starting not right ahead of me, but in the top ten, and I was quite a few spots behind them.
Honestly, I don’t put much thought into that. I’m a believer in, when the green flag waves, the cards are dealt and you’re in for a 285-mile game of poker. A five-hour game of poker sounds pretty fun to me. Everybody’s got to play their cards, and whoever plays their cards right, normally wins the race. And starting that far back can play a huge factor into that. It can go both ways. The guy that starts first ends up being in with some of the slower Class 10 cars and Trophy Truck stuff, and those guys are probably going a little faster and making some more dust. And then there are slower UTVs that maybe I’d go around. So it can definitely go both ways.
Whether I won or not, I would never put blame or anything on starting in the back. I don’t think it’s really much of an advantage or disadvantage. it can definitely play both ways. And I’ve started both first and last in many races and have done well and badly from both positions. So I didn’t put too much thought into it at all—we kind of just went along our day and the rest of the week pre-running, not thinking too much about where we started.
As the race went on, you and your teammates kept climbing and climbing up the running order. In the closing stages, you, Brock, and Max were running together in the top three. But while you were last of the group at RM 200, you were on top at the end. How did you get past your teammates in those last few miles?
It kind of just all goes back to, once you get the draw results and you’re pre-running, you’re kind of simulating what position you think you’re going to be in in the race at (any) given mile that you’re running at. And right around mile 200, I kind of figured that that was where the race was going to start. I like setting up my race strategy that way and keeping a really good car under me in the first half or two thirds of the race, to be able to put a charge on, if I have to, the last third or half of the race.
That was the same game plan for San Felipe. The Polaris Factory Racing RZR Pro R Factorys have gotten immensely better and better each and every race. It’s starting to be that we’re able to go fast from the beginning, and the race can start at mile one. But I kind of stuck with that mentality of the 200-mile number and kind of was just able to keep a smooth pace from there. I think we were about three or four minutes down to the leader at the time, but I knew we weren’t that far down.
Sometimes you end up getting a good time at different races, and sometimes you’re a given amount of time down and you don’t know why, and that’s bad news. Luckily, at San Felipe, we knew why we were down that time—we kind of just kept a slower pace, a very conservative pace, and didn’t take much risk. And honestly, at mile 200, it’s not like we lit the wick and sent it. We kind of just kept a smooth pace, but a little bit higher of a smooth pace. It’s hard to explain what that feeling is in words, I guess, but with the experience everybody on the team has, somebody like that would be able to understand you’re kind of just letting the car roll faster instead of letting it slow down so much for the corners and bumps and such.
(We) kind of just kept cruising and it seemed to work out. We got to the finish line there, and the last split time we had, I was third or fourth. But I got to actually see both Max Eddy and Branden Sims physically on course. Max was an amazing teammate and actually let me by, pulled over for me. That’s something we do on the team—when a car catches you, especially if they started behind you, you kind of just let them by. Last year, I think I either let somebody on the team by or somebody let me by at every race last year. So that’s great to keep that camaraderie going.
With Sims, I actually got up behind him within 30 miles of the finish, and he was on a better line. I knew there was an option line and when I timed it in pre-running it was about a minute slower, which is a lot. And you never want to take that way in the race, knowing that it’s a minute slower, but we took that line. And luckily for me and super unlucky for him, he got stuck behind a slower Trophy Truck Spec that was having a bad day and it slowed him up a minute or more on the good line, and that Trophy Truck slowed him up enough to let me by him.
That’s sometimes how it plays out. I always feel like I’m on the other side of that—I get stuck behind somebody in the good line and somebody goes blowing around me on the slow line. So I was a little bit lucky. I don’t like saying the word luck because I think luck is when preparation and opportunity meet, and that’s super true with the race team, but I kind of got lucky there, I guess, with Sims.
Then we turned left and headed back north for the last 20 miles of the race. It was super torn up and super silty and again, we kind of just let the car flow and do what it likes to do. And the car is super happy going at that pace, so I just kind of let it flow and got to the finish line and really didn’t know where we were at. I knew that we were first or second, but I figured that we were second, knowing that it’s super hard to make up time on a driver like Brock.
We got the unofficial results and we had won by 13 seconds, which was like, oh, boy, that’s crazy. But honestly I wasn’t too over the top excited. Whether I’d gotten first or second, it was going to be a win for the team and a win for the team is a win for me—that’s how I like to play it with the team. And I’m stoked to be a part of it and get a win for the team. So overall, it was a great day. And I’m ready for another one coming up at the Baja 500 for sure.
It’s funny that you mentioned taking the option line and having something different from the norm happen there and work to your benefit. Last year, you spent a lot of time in the lead in San Felipe, only to have issues just a few miles short of the finish. This year was the opposite—you didn’t lead until the very late stages of the race. Do you feel like you took care of some unfinished business by winning this race, and especially by winning it in this way?
Yeah. I mean, of course, last year was a pretty good heartbreaker for the old 1821 rig, getting within three or four miles of the finish line. It was the same course the last five miles and I got to drive past it four or five times pre-running, and actually, on that fifth time, driving past the area where we had the issues last year, decided I was going to find a different line and not go through the area that that I had to sit in and get towed out of last year. I found a little bit of a harder packed line by there, just so I wouldn’t have to go through that moment again. There was no way it was going to happen the same way. Even if it did break again, I would be in a different line so I wouldn’t have the same thing happened twice. So I think that was kind of ironic.
But I don’t think about those things in the race car. There’s too much going on to think like “I hope it doesn’t break again.” And the thing about the race car and the amount of improvement we’ve made for the car overall, the cars are so much more capable this year, through some of that same race course and area, than they were last year. So that just speaks for the team and everybody at the factory in Minnesota with Polaris. The amount of improvement we made of these cars is super immense.
It was clear from the start of last year that this team was going to be something special in desert racing. Still, there’s always room for growth, and the entire team has always kept its sights forward. How much further ahead are you at the start of year two as a group than you were to even start last season?
Rent is due every day on a race team. If you’re not getting better every day, somebody else is. And there are a lot of people out there right now that want to beat us, and they’re working really hard to beat us. So for the race team rent is due every day, that rent being improvement on the race cars. There’s a huge group of about 30 people that every day they’re thinking about how to make this race car faster. The worth of our improvement has been immense. You know, the last 365 days, it gets all those guys and girls super fired up to keep improving. That’s the plan with the race team, to be better today than we were yesterday, and it’s really showing. And I hope everybody can see that.
What did the team learn about the RZR Pro R Factory Edition last season that shaped changes to the cars for this year? Did you mostly make little tweaks here and there or were there any wholesale improvements?
For Polaris to come out with Gen 1 last year and debut at San Felipe, race all last year with the Generation 1 vehicle, and then plan to come out with the Generation 2, was really a great idea. We took Generation 1, went through it with a fine-tooth comb, got every little detail that we didn’t like with the Gen 1, and improved upon it with Gen 2. And honestly, there was a bit of stuff, but it wasn’t crazy. It’s not like we took a sawzall on a Gen 1. A lot of it was just small stuff and improvements that we made upon.
Honestly, when I’m driving this I’m amazed about what it can do. I’ve driven Trophy Trucks, I’ve driven Class 11. That’s the range that I’ve been in in off-road racing and, with the Polaris being somewhere in the middle of that, it’s the most capable vehicle I’ve ever raced in a desert race by far. It goes through the whoops and give you the same feeling a Trophy Truck does, and I can climb over mountains way better than a Trophy Truck and go through silt beds with no worries with the all-wheel drive. I went 113 miles an hour with the stock Polaris two-liter Pro R motor on the dry lake bed at San Felipe. If that doesn’t bring the word improvement into all our heads, I don’t know what does!
It’s incredible what these cars can do, and I’m not just saying that because I’m a part of the team and want to continue being part of the team. But it’s crazy. My dad being a 40-year veteran of off-road, seeing the changes that it’s made, and being a staple in the Trophy Truck class and winning however many Baja 1000s and however many races—he’s both ridden and driven these Polaris Factory Racing machines during testing, and he’s amazed too. So, if my word doesn’t do it for people that these cars are amazing, I’m sure his will!
Speaking of your dad, he had some old race trucks back in the day that used to say “the best never rest” on the side of them. You and the team were right on your way to the Polaris offices in Minnesota after San Felipe wrapped up. What were you working on up there, and how much fun was it to be at corporate HQ so soon after a victory?
Yeah, it did definitely work out nicely to win San Felipe on Saturday and then go out to Minnesota on Tuesday, just a couple days after winning. We hadn’t been up there—there are a couple of guys, our team manager Ryan Thomas and crew chief Tony Nelson had both been up there once or twice, but we hadn’t gotten to go up there as drivers. So it was really cool to see the bigger picture and everything.
We get there and it’s “congratulations on the win,” and that was that. The rest of the day and the evening was focused on how we could be better. But, you know, I don’t want to go there and be celebrated, I want to go there and keep the pressure on. But I don’t need to keep the pressure on at all—those guys are way disciplined enough to keep the pressure on themselves to be better and better.
After coming back from Minnesota last week, I went to the race shop yesterday to drop off the trophies and a and a dozen donuts for the guys. They were stoked as ever to see me, the donuts, and the trophy. It’s a great feeling to know that the hours and hours and hours of blood, sweat and tears, preparation, and everything that goes into the race team, there’s really a cool paperweight that that says San Felipe 250 winner that comes of it. So that’s what we’re all working towards and working for, it’s good to get that delivered to the race shop, and the guys are stoked on it. And, you know, not too long here we’re going to be testing even more, some little knicks and knacks we want to try, to go into the Baja 500 even stronger than we left San Felipe.
Finally, one of the things you said after team boss Craig Scanlon won San Felipe last year was that you thought one of the Polaris Factory Racing cars would win every single race. Not only were you right, but you also headed up a 1-2 finish for the team with all four cars in the top seven to kick off this year. As you look ahead to the rest of this season, how do you top that?
I didn’t know I said that, but I’m glad I did, I guess! I’m glad it worked out because it’s kind of nerve wracking to be sitting here, have you saying that I said that, and then not win them all. I’m glad that we have a great team and great drivers with Brock and Craig last year winning along with me at the 1000. We’re fortunate enough to have those guys and it’s great.
The next thing within the team is wanting to (go 1-2-3 on) the podium and we’ve been super close. Do I think that it could happen, yes, but I also think that some people outside of the team are underestimating that and how hard that is to do it. It’s not an easy thing to do at all—to have three or four cars all have great days is, super, super, super difficult to do. I don’t really think it’s ever been done, it’s almost unachievable in many minds.
But as the days go on, it’s definitely becoming more achievable and something that we believe we can do. Winning is expected, and soon enough I hope that, sweeping the podium will become expected as well. We’re all working towards that. I just won’t say we’re going to do it because I don’t want you to bring it back up, you know? But I think it’s very possible someday, and we have our eyes set on it.
Come on, you’re one for one calling your shots already. You don’t want to double down?
No, I’m batting a thousand! I live in Vegas, but I’m not much of a gambler or a bettor. So I’ll take my 100% record right now, one for one. And I’ll leave it at that and I’ll retire on that one.
Fair enough. I respect a man who knows his limits!
All images by Jason Zindroski, HighRev Photography and Polaris